His hands went to her back, and he kissed her more deeply and passionately than he'd ever kissed any woman before. Sofy's hands were against him, clutching as if in indecision. She made a low moan, that might have been protest, and might have been something else entirely. But her body pressed close, and then her hands were at his back, clutching his shirt, pulling him closer. It seemed to go on forever. The way it felt, that would have suited Jaryd fine. Only now, his hands were wanting more, a reflex slide on the back of her dress, searching for a lace. Wondering what the smooth white skin beneath would feel like, bare beneath his hand. Wondering what her body would feel like, pressed skin to skin with his own.
They parted. And stared at each other, clutching to each other's arms. Sofy's lovely eyes were big and dark, wide with hungry disbelief. Slowly, her fingertips went to her lips, as if savouring the memory of the kiss. And, perhaps, in a gesture of simple shock. Sofy, who was betrothed to the heir of Larosa. Sofy, upon whose marriage a great war hung, and the fate of multiple civilisations. Sofy, who was staring at him now in the realisation that all of these things, however difficult they'd been before, had just become enormously more complicated still.
“Oh dear lords,” she murmured. “We're really in trouble now, aren't we?”
Rhillian strode the dock as a cold wind gusted off the ocean and the boats heaved and tossed at their moorings. Grey clouds hung low, foretelling an end to summer. Halrhen and Shathi walked at her sides, serrin from the three Saalshen trading ships at anchor in the harbour, the last refuge of Saalshen on this bleak, forsaken shore. Halrhen cradled Aisha, half conscious and in pain, barely larger than a child in the big man's arms.
Smoke swirled across the debris-strewn and puddled pavings, and the stink of burning flesh. Pyres lined the dockside, at least fifteen, with several more under construction, piled high with the wood from half-demolished buildings. What little oil Dockside possessed was being spent to dispose of thousands of corpses, before disease set in. Raggedy men and women worked in groups, piling bricks to form a retaining wall, then hauling bodies by the cartload. Men wrapped themselves in dirty old cloth and leather to ward the blistering flames, wrestling stiff bodies onto the blaze. Priests and caratsa blessed the cartloads of stiffening corpses with holy water and prayers, mouths and noses covered with cloth to ward the smoke and smell.
They needed pits, but there were none on Dockside-the dead were normally disposed of at Angel Bay, but passage across Sharptooth remained treacherous as some of the Riverside mob continued to haunt the alleyways. There had been some suggestion that fishermen could haul boatloads of corpses out to sea and dump them, but the boats were needed for fishing, spare men to sail them were few and far between, and the winds now prevailed onshore, not only making sailing difficult but threatening to blow the terrible cargo back onto the docks regardless, all bloated and floating.
The uniform line of Dockside buildings was broken in places, where a blackened hole appeared, and a pile of collapsed masonry and charred wooden beams. Men and women climbed amongst the ruins, collecting valuables or anything salvageable. The dock markets had reappeared, stalls hawking wares amidst the carnage and smoke. People needed to eat and life went on. Rhillian knew that they would rebuild-humans had been killing and destroying each other's civilisations for as long as serrin had been recording their history, and yet the sum total of humanity never ceased its upward march. Once, she might have found some admiration for their tenacity. Now, she saw only bleak futility. They regenerated like rabbits, or like weeds. They needed to destroy each other, it was how they progressed, from one era to the next, in successive waves of creative obliteration. Serrin had thought to try to restrain this impulse in humans, to control it, to teach them better. Now, she saw it was pointless. This was what they were, and to wish it otherwise was to teach wolves to eat cabbage, or deer to lust red meat. She'd come to Petrodor three years ago, with dreams of finding a symmetry between humans and serrin. But humans and serrin, as Kiel had always warned, were fundamentally incompatible. Now, there was only survival.
They turned onto a pier as frothing waves rushed against the pylons below. Masts waved back and forth, and rigging whipped and clacked against the sail arms. Then Rhillian heard footsteps thumping on the pier planks behind. She turned.
“Errollyn,” she announced to the others, for warning. They kept walking. Rhillian fell several steps back, but did not stop.
“Rhillian.” Errollyn seemed out of breath. “Where are you taking Aisha?”
“Out to a ship, where else?” Rhillian said coldly. She did not look at him.
“You can't just grab her without telling anyone!” He was upset. “I didn't know where she was! I thought she'd been kidnapped, or-”
“She is serrin,” said Rhillian, “and she belongs with serrin. We're taking her home.”
“You asked her?”
“I don't need to ask her. Those of us who matter, just know.” Silence from Errollyn. She could feel his hurt, radiating like heat from the fires. Barely a day before, she might have been shocked at herself. Now, she barely cared.
“At least let me say goodbye.”
“You had few such compunctions with those at Palopy. Many are dead, who departed without your farewells.”
“Fuck you,” he said in Lenay.
They reached the end of the pier. A rowboat was moored there, its oars shipped, two more serrin waiting on its heaving deck. Halrhen simply held Aisha to his chest, an arm beneath her backside as she grasped his shoulders, and began climbing down the ladder. The serrin in the boat held it steady as best they could, and called warnings of an approaching swell.
Rhillian turned to Errollyn. The wind tossed his shaggy hair about a face marked with soot. There was a defiance there, and a pain, and a confusion that perhaps only Aisha would have understood. Rhillian was beyond caring about that either.
“You'd best change her dressings as soon as you're aboard,” Errollyn said. “I've done my best, but Dockside is short of clean dressings today. Also her fever is a little higher than it should be, despite my medicines. I've been mixing fenaseed and gilflower in her tea, so don't let her eat bread, they don't mix well-”
“We've healers aboard who surpass your skills,” Rhillian said. “She'll be better cared for there than here.”
“She hates boats. She'll be sick.”
“It won't kill her.” Errollyn stared at her. Rhillian could see the retort forming on the tip of his tongue. She knew what he wanted to say. All the deaths he wished to blame upon her. He refrained, with great difficulty, and heaved a deep breath. His judgment, however unspoken, did not make her angry. Rhillian felt beyond that. “You could come with us,” she suggested, bluntly.
“No,” said Errollyn. He reached within his jacket and withdrew a folded parchment. It had been sealed with a cord, tied in a bow. “I want you to deliver this to the council. I wrote it by Aisha's bedside this morning, when I could not sleep. They are my reasons for staying. In case anyone is interested.”
Rhillian tucked it into a pocket within her own jacket. Below, Halrhen stepped into the boat with Aisha. “You can write what you like,” said Rhillian. “Humans have better words for what you have done than we. They call it betrayal.”
“You can call it whatever you like,” Errollyn said coldly, “but you can't disguise your disaster here. I warned you, you ignored me, and now look. Go back to the council. Impress them with your pretty words and excuses. Fool them, like you've fooled everyone else. Like you've fooled yourself, most of all. And then soon enough we'll all be dead.”